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Few writers are as proficient in the genre known as magical realism as Daniel Wallace is — and The Kings and Queens of Roam, his latest novel, is an elegant example of his ability to weave fantastical elements into contemporary settings.

Wallace directs the creative writing program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is best known for his earlier book Big Fish, which became a movie that Tim Burton directed. Unlike Big Fish, which was a series of fantastical reminiscences, The Kings and Queens of Roam is a more structured plot. A layered and allegorical tale, the story is set in the dying town of Roam, somewhere in a lush and rainy landscape reminiscent of the Pacific Northwest. But that landscape is populated by fantastical figures, including ghosts, a near-dwarf, an evil silk baron, lumberjacks, black dogs, flesh-eating birds, a haunted forest, magical life-giving water, an old Chinese man, and two sisters: Helen and Rachel.

Rachel, the younger sister, is beautiful and blind. She depends upon Helen to care for her and weave the narrative that creates Rachel's understanding of the world outside their decaying house. But Helen, burdened with the responsibility of Rachel's upbringing after their parents are killed in a car crash, is embittered by the knowledge that she “was ugly from the day she was born.” People turn away from her when they meet her.

So one day, when 13-year-old Helen is brushing six-year-old Rachel's hair, she reverses their fates. She tells Rachel that she is the ugly one, and says Helen is beautiful.

When Rachel accepts that story, Helen begins to take her to places in Roam she describes in lurid, if made-up, detail: houses haunted by murdered families; a hanging tree; the Boneyard, where bodies are scattered, not buried; and the Forest of the Flesh-Eating Birds. Through the forest and beyond a great and dangerous ravine, Helen tells Rachel, is the land of light and honey — where everyone is happy. So Helen constructs the boundaries of Rachel's world.

Then, as in all good fairy tales, retribution arrives. Rachel hears of a bridge across the ravine and decides to explode her boundaries. She departs to find the happy land, encountering a new cast of characters and changing her destiny. She leaves Helen frantic, bereft, and forced to turn to an unlikely source for help and affection.

The King and Queens of Roam is like a darker The Princess Bride, the wonderful adventure by William Goldman (which was an excellent book long before the popular 1987 movie). They are both love stories, although Wallace is writing about the love and rivalry between sisters, as opposed to Goldman's romance between the farm boy and his princess. Like The Princess Bride, The Kings and Queens of Roam is funny and ironic in parts, and both are morality tales. For those who enjoy this style of writing, Alice Hoffman is another master, particularly in her older novels such as Here on Earth and Practical Magic.

Hoffman's characters are fuller, quirkier and her stories more heart-rending.

Wallace's characters are archetypes, almost caricatures: the beautiful sister, and the ugly sister; the smallest man in Roam and Lumberjack Smith. What saves them and makes the reader care about them is that in Wallace's hands, and thanks to his deceptively simple and poetic writing, they do develop. Digby Chang, the almost-dwarf, grows from a lonely boaster who converses largely with ghosts to a lover and helpmate who learns that “worry and love were not that much different.”

Helen and Rachel both change too, and ultimately, this is a story of forgiveness.

Laura Eggertson is an Ottawa-based journalist, writer and editor.

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